Healing Forward: The Reversibility of Trauma and the Power of Hope

Matt Darrah (00:01.235)

Hello and welcome to All Things Foster, a place for coffee, connection, and community. Thank you to Hannah and Loretta for being on the show with us today. This is part five in our series on trauma. And today's episode is called Healing Forward, the Reversibility of Trauma and the Power of Hope. We've been talking about this for weeks and I'm super excited about this episode. But first I want to thank our episode sponsor, Bracken Hochstein,

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Loretta (00:31.533)

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Matt Darrah (00:55.911)

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Hannah, one more time for us. Give us a rundown of your background and your history and why we should listen to you. Yeah, so I'm sure this one will probably be the shortest because it's the fifth episode. I have a bachelor's and master's in psychology. Currently working on my PhD in psychology, public policy and law. My specialties are essentially trauma and suicide. And so that's what I've researched even in my dissertation despite it not being clinically focused.

My dissertation is on actually barriers to reporting sexual assaults. So still very trauma focused. I work as a sexual assault survivor advocate. I say work, I volunteer actually. Generally on the weekends, less time now because of school, but I still do that. I've been doing that for five years and then just recently got a position where I work with...

individuals, specifically youth, who generally have trauma histories and are needing a different type of placement for them. So that's kind of my background. I've been in this world for a really, really long time at this point. And Loretta comes to us. Kind of give us a little bit of your background in this whole space.

Loretta (02:44.555)

Well, we have been foster parents, had been foster parents for about six years. We've adopted six kids. So.

In that six years, we've lots of things about trauma, details, just how to handle situations, people to go to, the what nots to do, what to do. So.

Matt Darrah (03:08.552)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (03:16.029)

Yeah. And in your experience, do you think that because one of the things we're doing on this podcast on this series is we're busting myths. And so kind of the myth this week is that we're you can't you can't get over a trauma where you're just you have it, you're stuck with it and you can't move past it. So what does I mean, what do you think about that myth? You think that's real or is that trash?

Loretta (03:43.519)

I think that is definitely a myth and I can say that from personal experience as well as fostering. So, I mean, we've seen it.

Matt Darrah (03:52.497)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (03:57.331)

Yeah. trauma can be overcome. You can reverse the effects. can't make the thing whatever the thing is like it never happened, but you can learn to work past it. You can learn to deal with it. You can overcome it. And hope. There is hope. And we've been saying it for the last four weeks. There is hope. And so, let's define

Loretta (03:58.965)

first hand.

Loretta (04:16.861)

Absolutely.

Matt Darrah (04:28.273)

The reversibility of trauma. What does that mean, Hannah? It's really the idea that the effects of trauma are not permanent. And so, just like Loretta said, you can essentially heal parts of yourself. And I like to say you move on with your trauma instead of your trauma moving on with you. Instead of letting it dictate your life, you dictate how it impacts you. In fact, last episode I told Matt that...

You know, what happens to somebody is not necessarily their fault, but who you become, what you do as an adult is your responsibility. So it's my responsibility to heal from trauma if needed or to help others, right? Because I have that capability, have that knowledge. So to show up for sexual assault survivors and help them walk through that, me just showing up provides them a level of hope and can help.

them to kind of move on with what's happened to them instead of letting it dictate how their life goes. So important. We are more than the things that have happened to us. So let's talk about hope. is, what are your, how do you define hope? I think about it as the gas in a car, but the car is resilience and healing.

So without hope, you're not going to be resilient. You're not going to be able to heal. And so it is the thing. It's essentially the fuel for both of those. And we've talked about it little a little bit. Resilience tends to be more trait based. So if you're resilient as a kid, you tend to be pretty resilient into adult years. And the vice the opposite is true. I would argue to a degree, though, resilience can be taught, especially modeled, especially when you have kids coming into the home.

Loretta (06:24.414)

Yes.

Matt Darrah (06:25.593)

If you show that you can get a bad grade, bounce back, learn how to study better, get a better grade the next time, that kind of goes a little bit, I guess, with emotional intelligence that we've talked about. But that resilience, especially in fostering, think, as foster parents, being able to model it and showing them that there is hope, that, like you said, you're not what happened to you. Yeah. Yeah. So...

We'll say again, the disclaimer, guys, that these are heavy topics, and we've been saying for weeks that we're going to get there, we're going to get there, well, we're here. And so, we want to be realistic with what we're talking about, and we want to acknowledge that there's pain there, but transformation is possible. It is. And I'm not going to sit here, I'm not in the habit of making false promises or giving false hope. In fact, that's something that's

really drilled into me within my field that you can't sit there and promise a client, yeah, you'll get past this because the answer is it depends. Am I going to get over trauma? It really depends on a lot of different things. But yeah, the tone for this one, like he said, is kind of just focused on that hope that the uplifting aspect while being realistic, there are some traumas that we know objectively are more impactful to humans and to individuals than

other traumas, right? So for example, being sexually assaulted versus a car accident. Both can be traumatic. Both can have injuries, but one tends to have a greater impact on the person physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially even than the other. So let's reframe, what do you think, reversibility, it's not forgetting about the trauma? Yeah. Because that's not helpful. If that happens,

I would argue that's a problem. Yeah. If you just forget what happened, one of two things happen. So it's either you've suppressed it. So that's you actively pushing it down into a box, closing the lid and throwing it in some dark closet, locking the door, walking away. Or your mind has gone into this hyperprotective mode where it represses it. So people get those mixed up, suppress and repress.

Matt Darrah (08:49.693)

They're pretty similar. The difference is one is being done intentionally and the other is essentially like a survival mechanism. If you move on and just forget about the trauma, one of those has happened. So my brain would be thinking, what? And let's explore this a little bit more. Absolutely. So trauma reshapes the brain. We've talked about, you know,

Loretta (09:10.632)

I

Matt Darrah (09:17.765)

epigenetics and how that plays into it and all the things, but how does healing practices, what healing practices can help retrain the brain or reverse the effects of the trauma? Yeah. So I know I used one example. I'll go back to it since it's...

part of the series, we talked about infants having hemisphericdermies, which is when they go in and they take out, generally these infants have severe seizures and are debilitating. And they'll go in and take out an entire half of the brain, which most people think there's no way they can live. And there plenty of studies that show that when done early enough because of something called neuroplasticity and...

if they're given enough support, so occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, whatever it is, their brain essentially is able to rewire itself so the half that's left compensates for the half that is gone. And so using that same example, we have therapies within mental health that can help to rewire the brain. Some of those are EMDR, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, especially with foster care system.

I would argue could be really, really helpful. When you have a kid who maybe is coming from a home of a single mother into a home that has a father figure, that could be good or bad. And so sometimes there could be some issues there and some headbutting. So it's not just about the kid or that one person, but it's also about involving the family there. Narrative therapy is about essentially telling your story.

Loretta (10:49.48)

Thank

Matt Darrah (11:03.835)

We talked last episode about naming emotions. helps to lessen their strength and effect on you. Same thing with story. What that one really, I would argue, boils down to is a type of exposure therapy. You're exposing yourself to your trauma over and over again so you become less reactive to it. That doesn't mean it's not hard. That doesn't mean that you're not going to feel strong emotions related to it. It means that

maybe it's no longer significantly impacting your functioning and decreasing your ability to be a spouse or to be a normal kid even in school. See, that's what I was doing with this, was exposure therapy. Oh, exposure therapy? Yeah, yeah. So, Loretta, I know, you just joined in, but I have an irrational fear of spiders and everybody knows it. And Matt 3D printed a spider and put it on my chair for today.

Loretta (12:03.116)

I love that.

Matt Darrah (12:03.987)

And if it had been more realistic, there's a solid chance I would have just walked out. Because this thing is, I mean, it's like a half dollar in the middle. It's pretty significant. But yes, type of exposure. He really does want his PhD. Yeah, okay. narrative therapy. So, and then you've got trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy.

Loretta (12:21.487)

Hahaha!

Matt Darrah (12:33.427)

Yes, and I'll be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. I think it can be really invalidating sometimes. It's also very, very strict on timeline. Generally speaking, those who religiously practice CBT by the book are only seeing clients for a short period of time. Oh, wow. Yeah, like a few weeks maybe. When you're dealing with a trauma-exposed population,

a few weeks is not enough, right? The part of CBT that can be helpful is maybe the reframing and refocusing, right? Instead of I'm dirty because this happened to me, it's what happened to me was wrong, but that doesn't make me dirty. So it's changing shame to maybe feeling some guilt, which isn't always negative. But instead of making it your identity, it's outward. You're focused on the thing itself. Yeah, right. Wow.

So Loretta, share with us a little bit, if you don't mind, about your kind of experience with your littlest one and how she's doing.

Loretta (13:37.126)

you

Loretta (13:48.888)

Well, she started out, obviously, with drugs in her system. We, of course, we got her newborn. So in my thought process, that was going to be easier than, say, the two year old we got. We struggled with and somewhat still do struggle.

She's very sensitive. She doesn't like angry people. She's hyperactive. We redirect her constantly. We just have found ways to adapt her. Maybe not so much change her, but help her to adapt.

She's spunky, she's fun loving, loves to play jokes on everybody, has a great sense of humor.

It has been, it's a roller coaster, but if you know.

just from learning experiences, what triggers there are, then we're aware and know how to redirect her.

Matt Darrah (15:23.667)

Yeah. And I remember I did a placement package for Loretta and Darren. And we were just talking, it's been almost nine years, almost nine years. And I remember bringing a placement package over to these guys and holding, was, was Abcde at the time. And she was like one of the tiniest little babies I've ever seen. mean, I mean we,

Loretta (15:32.802)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Loretta (15:50.658)

she was tiny.

Matt Darrah (15:52.867)

she was in preemie clothes that looked like they were three sizes too big. And I just remember holding her and it was late. I mean, it was what? 930, 10 o'clock, something like that. And we stood there and we talked for quite a while. And since then, Loretta was on our board for a time and things like that. And it's just been great. yeah, from a distance, watched

Loretta (15:57.029)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Loretta (16:02.851)

Yeah, was, yeah.

Matt Darrah (16:22.791)

this little girl just grow and do well. And it's not that she doesn't have any problems. But you guys have learned how to help her, how to get beyond the things that were, that the deck was stacked against her. We talked early on in this series about how different things

Loretta (16:26.791)

Thank

Loretta (16:35.396)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (16:50.035)

have long-term consequences, whether it's in utero, then you've got the generational issues that can come. I don't know, and Loretta doesn't know, and Hannah doesn't know how she'll be when she's 25, but I have seen her grow and do really well.

Loretta (16:52.374)

Okay.

Loretta (17:16.126)

Absolutely. She changes every day and makes huge progress in just in school and her relationships and understanding and it's really an amazing thing to watch unfold.

Matt Darrah (17:37.137)

Yeah. And it's an amazing, amazing story of hope from a little one that just had a really hard, hard start. And like you said, maybe if you don't mind, Loretta, digging a little bit, you were talking about how you thought it was going to be easier because she was a newborn versus the two-year-old that you got. Can you kind of maybe just share a little bit of...

Loretta (17:42.36)

Yes.

Matt Darrah (18:06.511)

What made it a challenge, more of a challenge than the two-year-old?

Loretta (18:11.587)

I think in the instance that you're getting a newborn, know, everybody has these, I guess, ideas of how a newborn baby is sweet and cuddly and generally easy to take care of. mean, I know not all newborns are that way, but she had a very large

Matt Darrah (18:25.415)

Right, right.

Loretta (18:40.9)

She cried quite a bit. She had a startle reflex that didn't allow her, you know, because you lay, life has changed a lot since my first child was born, but you lay them on their back now to sleep. And she absolutely could not lay on her back. She had such a large startle reflex. She would jump even as a newborn infant and just start crying like tears.

big tears because she couldn't, she just couldn't calm down enough to get comfortable, I think. and so I slept with her on my stomach, on her stomach, where she could lay and feel comfortable, up against me. And there wasn't that startle reflex. And night after night we slept like that.

Matt Darrah (19:16.691)

you

Matt Darrah (19:38.333)

Yeah.

Loretta (19:40.225)

because you can't lay them on their stomach. And yet that was the only way we could get her to sleep and her to be comfortable. The two-year-old, as opposed to the two-year-old, that can sometimes let you know how they're feeling, what's bothering them, voice opinions.

Matt Darrah (19:49.821)

Right.

Matt Darrah (20:02.451)

Mm-hmm.

Loretta (20:08.023)

be redirected, you know, a newborn you don't know what's coming. And of course you don't know these babies in the womb. You don't know how negatively they were affected.

Matt Darrah (20:11.4)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (20:21.949)

Yeah. Yeah, there's this, there is that myth and we talked about it in one of our episodes that, you know, the baby's born and they're a blank slate and they are just not. No, there's so much that goes on in utero that we, and we barely even understand it right now. I mean, ethically, we can't, you know.

Loretta (20:33.482)

No, they're not. Absolutely not.

Loretta (20:42.753)

Right.

Matt Darrah (20:46.385)

have a pregnant mom and traumatize her and see what happens to We can't do that. So it's really just kind of predicting what might happen. So, so yeah, it, it, it, it, they don't come with no problems. You know, I had breakfast, I was at a men's breakfast one time and I got, I got really pretty upset because they were going around the room and talking about who needed prayer and so on and so forth in this.

Loretta (20:48.672)

Right. Yes.

Matt Darrah (21:15.847)

This one guy was like, hey, you know, so and so got this three month old baby and we just, need to pray for them because they're really struggling. She's up all night and you know, and this other guy pops off and he's like, so yeah, she's like every other three year old and I about lost it. And I tried very patiently to say, listen, that three month old, wildly different than your three month old that you

had a fairly easy normal pregnancy and had her and then now she's three months old. Totally different than what this kiddo has been through and it really, it really set me off and because they're not blank slates when they're little bitty and they just can't remember everything, right? And so there are big challenges. But again, so.

Loretta (21:59.6)

Yeah.

Loretta (22:12.818)

And I feel like no matter what the trauma of being separated from your biological mother and I mean father too, but your mother carries you. separated, it's got unfounded. I mean, we don't even know the effects of it. Just that alone. That's just a small tip of the iceberg.

Matt Darrah (22:18.853)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (22:34.397)

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Darrah (22:39.859)

Yeah, mean, you think about, you know, they say babies like to hear music in the womb, right? But guess whose voice they hear 24 hours a day, seven days a week for nine months. They hear mom's voice. And now all of a sudden, mom's not there. Yeah. Right. And so it is. It's that in its in and of itself is is traumatic. And, you know, not to say that we should never do that because we obviously have to. But that

Loretta (22:54.337)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (23:07.543)

that little one that's in your home, very different experiences than the little one that you had yourself. so, said all that to say though that there is hope. so Hannah, let's talk the role of self-awareness and hope. Well again, and I say again, because if you haven't, should watch the last episode. in that one we talked about emotional intelligence quite a bit.

Loretta (23:20.928)

Yes.

Matt Darrah (23:37.329)

And it really boiled down to the fact that one, you can't pour from an empty cup. And emotional intelligence without it, at least in my experience and what I see, people have a harder time asking for help because they're not tuned into themselves. They don't have that self-awareness, self-reflection, or even that ability to empathize, to ask for help for other people when needed. And so if you're in that situation,

and you don't have the emotional intelligence needed, feeling hope, I would argue, would be a lot harder. Because hope is, again, it's that fuel for resiliency and for healing. Without the self-awareness to know that you even need to heal, do you really feel the need for hope sometimes? And so, you know, there could be a lot of arguments around that. And hope, I do want to say, just a widely...

Loretta (24:25.362)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (24:32.699)

widely researched topic in every area. mean, from what I've seen, everything from physical health studies to how hope impacts cancer patients to, especially in my field, the mental health area of how hope helps with various diagnoses or in like what we're talking about in trauma exposed populations. So, define for us psychological hope.

Loretta (24:57.984)

Thank

Matt Darrah (25:02.813)

What is that? Again, it just goes back to we kind of touched on it at beginning of it being the fuel for resiliency and healing. Hope is essentially that feeling that, know, think about it this way. Everybody hits hard times, right? And when it rains, it pours, at least in my experience. When one thing goes wrong and they come in packs of 20. Hope is that feeling of it's not going to be this way forever.

Loretta (25:31.968)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (25:32.455)

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I can recover from this or I can bounce back, get a bad grade, right? I can up my GPA like I'm not ashamed to say it and make the greatest grade on one of my papers in school. And I saw that that grade drop and I was like, OK, it's early in the semester. There's hope to bring it back. And I've brought it back. But yes, it's that feeling of

It's not going to be like this forever. And sometimes you have to hold hope for other people. Especially when you're in the dark spot. Sometimes you have to be the one holding out hope and being the quote unquote optimist of like, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. So just the belief or the expectation or something that things can get better, will get better. And I know we talked about

Loretta (26:29.427)

Mm hmm.

Matt Darrah (26:31.763)

And I think this is what we're going to kind of get into. we talked about how. If if someone is in a scenario and they believe that it can get better, the effect of the trauma is less right than if there's just no hope that things are ever going to get better. Am I remembering that right? Well, it depends. In case you didn't know, Loretta, every answer in psychology is it depends. It really does.

Loretta (26:59.071)

It depends. Okay.

Matt Darrah (27:01.755)

It depends. How do you help this foster kid? It depends. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of the running joke, both in this series, but also in my field. In fact, I think I said it today at work at one point. It really depends. So the study that I want to bring up. So, first of all, the Oklahoma University, Hook and Horned. I don't care for. I love OU and what they do, but.

UT is my school. They have an entire research center dedicated to hope. I mean, that's how big this topic is. It's talked about so widely and in so many circles. And there's a research study specifically by Kurt Richer on drowning rats, which sounds really unethical. I understand. I will...

I'll be the first to say, my field does not have the best track record of ethics in our early years. We really, really don't. We've a lot better. We have a lot of things in place now. But anyway, so what he did is he put rats in this body of water to see how long they would tread water before essentially giving up. So losing hope. And then what he did with a different group of rats would put them in the same body of water, but right before

they're about to lose hope and drown, they provide them a little platform that essentially saves them, gives them time to rest, and then they take the platform away again. And what they found was the rats in the study who had that platform given to them, so hope, the hope of being saved, the hope of getting to stay alive, when they were back in that situation, so put back in the tank of water,

would tread for far longer and would keep going and pushing harder simply for the hope that that platform pops up again. And so, you know, at work, I was actually talking with a coworker. Actually, it during my interview. I mentioned the same study to them, and I talked about how in a lot of places, in foster care, in placement situations like where I work, mental health areas,

Loretta (28:57.755)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (29:24.057)

those caseworkers a lot of times end up being the platform or the foster care parents end up being the platform that come along and help to save them from feeling like they're drowning and to give them that hope. And even if that little rat jumps off the platform, not to say kids are rats. Let's say the, let's go with kids. Let's say the kid, you know, hypothetically kind of jumps off that platform.

Loretta (29:41.726)

Thank you.

Matt Darrah (29:49.479)

They're not coming to you for whatever. You're still there. You're being consistent. They know the platform's there. There's still that hope that they can go back to. And so I love that study just because it really speaks on the impact of hope. And then within foster care settings, you get the opportunity to give kids that. Kids who... Because you're right, the myth of the blank slate, there's the myth as well of if you can't remember it, it doesn't impact you.

Loretta (29:58.622)

Mm-hmm.

Loretta (30:18.59)

Right.

Matt Darrah (30:18.609)

which is garbage, that's not true at all. I can show you paper after paper that, again, I don't use the word prove in this field, but strongly suggests that that's not true. And that in foster care scenarios, you being that platform can really change the direction of their life. And it's just hope. That's what it is at the end of the day.

So some of the practical strategies of... Is it trying to have hope? What is it, these practical strategies where we're trying to get over trauma, trying to reverse the effects of trauma? What are we talking here with the small achievable goals and stuff like that? Yeah, so I do want to set the expectation that reversing trauma doesn't mean...

So I grew up in the era of VHS tapes and we had this little rewinder. You just stick it in, push it down and it would rewind it right back to the beginning. There is no doing that with trauma. Right. You can't, like I said, if you forget it, it's suppressed or repressed. We've got a problem. you're fully dissociated. Right. So there is no rewinding the tape to before things happened. It's moving on with it.

Loretta (31:30.203)

important.

Matt Darrah (31:43.003)

and you being in charge and in control instead of it controlling you. And so some of these practical strategies are aimed at helping you to find hope in little ways. Between the break or maybe it was last episode, or in the break, I can't remember, you were talking about a journal that you have, right? And it starts with gratitude every day for him. These small achievable goals,

help to build resilience, help to show people, I am capable, right? That could be as simple as going to therapy once a month, right? Maybe therapy is terrifying to you. Small, achievable goal, go once a month. Or once every other month if needed. That's small, it's achievable. You don't want to bite off more than you can chew, because then you're going to feel like it's hopeless. Like you're incapable and that nothing's going to change. Keeping things realistic.

Loretta (32:30.417)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (32:40.209)

And I say this all the time, manage your expectations about everything. Manage your expectations. Because if you think you're going to get this kid in and just turn their life around 100 percent in three days, it's like the people who go to the gym and they walk out and they're like, I've got to be buff now. Yeah. No, it takes genetics. It takes eating right. It takes consistency. All those things.

Loretta (32:54.705)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (33:09.171)

And so small achievable goals, finding connection and community is the next one. Isolation research is actually found, especially in elderly populations, because they tend to have less of a community. Those who are isolated die sooner. Wow. Because they don't have that source of connection. And so finding connection and community. And I would argue that that these really need to be people who you can have honest conversations with.

that you can ask for help from, that you can say, I'm really struggling, or I just need a break. You mentioned using respite when needed. So being realistic about where you're at, your limitations, and then asking for help when needed. You're only going to be able to find help if you have connection and community with other people. Yeah, again, that's the whole title of the podcast. All Things Foster a place for coffee, connection, and community. And we didn't plan that.

Loretta (34:01.916)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (34:09.283)

out. I wasn't, you know, I didn't tell her to put that in there. But we do. We, and I said it a thousand times in this podcast, we do better in community. We do. The next one is tapping into spiritual or creative practices. So a lot of individuals who are religious or spiritual, which for the record, those are two different things. Feel free to Google it if you want, but they are they are a little bit different. But researchers found those individuals

tend to experience a little bit more hope, tend to have some more positive outcomes, especially in like religious communities, right? We live in the Bible Belt. I think there's more churches than there are coffee shops at this point, which still says a lot, because there's a lot of coffee shops. In fact, I think one church is like bigger than the Civic Center or close to something. I don't know. It's huge. They have concerts there, whatever. So tapping into...

those areas of yourself.

religious individuals naturally tend to have this hope of things will turn around for good. Right. It sucks right now. I'm in it right now. I mean, I hear it a lot like this is just a difficult season, but this isn't going to be the end. And I say that as someone who who studied theology for a while. So and then went into mental health. I still see that a lot.

Loretta (35:27.099)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (35:41.223)

people who have strong faith or spiritual practices or creative, they're artistic, musical, whatever the case may be, that gives them some level of purpose through life, which speaks to hope. Sure. I want to back up for one second and get Loretta. What's your take on the finding connection in community? How do you see that?

Loretta (36:04.251)

I think there's nothing, well, not nothing, but it's one of the most important things. Just having that connection with someone, anyone, several people that you can just say, I'm struggling. This is what I'm struggling with.

Matt Darrah (36:16.221)

Yeah.

Loretta (36:33.559)

I think that, like she said, the less that you have, I mean, it's hard. It's hard being a foster parent. It's hard being a parent. And I think it just gets harder. And having someone that you have something in common with or just being able to take a break and saying, need a break. I mean, that's huge.

And someone that understands that, that's not like, well, why would you need a break? You know? Because there's a lot of people that don't, don't understand that concept of taking, you know, I need an hour to myself or, you know, I need a friend to go have coffee with. I need you to keep the baby for two hours and let me clean house or

Just anything that you need, that you have someone there that you can say, I'm struggling.

Matt Darrah (37:44.243)

Yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. And that gives you hope. That gives you that raft to breathe for a minute. the platform to come out of the water. And then get back to it. Yeah, you said reframing and building new meaning. What you mean by that? Well, this goes to my absolute favorite type of therapy, CBT. For those who didn't watch.

Loretta (37:51.799)

us.

Loretta (38:11.64)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (38:13.587)

last episode, CBT is not my favorite for trauma exposed populations. It has its place. I think every type of therapy has its place. And it's about, it's kind like trying on a pair of jeans. You got to see what fits best for you. But so reframing is kind of like looking at a situation instead of seeing all the negative, try to find some positives. And instead of saying, I'm never going to be able to do this,

Loretta (38:37.336)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (38:40.691)

you might reframe it as, is going to be difficult and there's going to be a lot of challenges, but I'm capable. Maybe I've got community I can lean on, I've got tools in place, I know who to ask for help from. So that would be reframing. Building new meaning would really have to do with new meaning within your life. So after something traumatic,

It can really alter not only your relationship with the world, but the relationship with yourself. Especially some traumas. It really impacts both. So it could be one, could be the other, could be both. And you have to find new meaning after that. So like I said, I work with a lot of sexual assault survivors. They can't just go back to before that happened. And that's one of the objectively most impactful type of traumas.

just based off research on how it impacts somebody and how pervasive it is across their lifespan as well. Building new meaning would look like instead of, in fact, I use the word survivor, right? I'll say sexual assault survivor instead of sexual assault victim. So that little shift actually, and again, so I like to do everything empirically based.

research shows that using the word survivor over victim provides a positive outlook for that individual that you're working with. So sexual assault survivor or whatever, because there's a connotation that comes with a survivor of like, yeah, I can't get past this. I can't do this versus a victim mentality. Right. We do talk about that a little bit. That victim mentality of man, nothing good ever happens to me.

Loretta (40:23.393)

Yes.

Loretta (40:28.706)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (40:32.859)

I'm never going to be able to get past this. This is so horrible versus again, survivor. Like I can, I can do this. I can push past where I'm comfortable. And I would argue when you push past where you're comfortable, that's where you see the most growth and the most healing. Because nobody likes therapy. I'm a mental health professional. And no one ever in my entire short career

Loretta (40:48.694)

Mm-hmm.

Loretta (40:52.14)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (41:00.753)

has said, man, I'm really looking forward to therapy. I'm gonna ball my eyes out and we're gonna talk about the worst days of my life. But it's really important because it can help you to find new meaning. So let's talk about emotional intelligence in healing. We talked about that emotional intelligence is not like regular intelligence that you have kind of some pre-established

Loretta (41:03.66)

Matt Darrah (41:30.597)

abilities there, emotional intelligence you can grow and increase and stuff. talk to us about that. Yeah, so I'll use a little bit of my childhood growing up. I grew up in a military family and very emotionally stunted. And we weren't modeled or taught emotion regulation, emotion intelligence, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy for others.

And that's something that as an adult and even an older teen, because thankfully I had some good people around me when I was in high school, started to teach me and more importantly model for me of what that looks like. Let me take a step back and actually breathe a little bit, right? Because I'm getting real angry. I'm getting worked up. That's that self-regulation. Within the context of hope and healing, it's...

It's using that emotional intelligence to know that it is OK to feel both broken while being ready to heal. In fact, I'd argue those go hand in hand more times than not. Yeah, that's why people go to therapy. They feel broken and they're ready to heal. Hopefully, hopefully. Sometimes it's court mandated. Yeah, that does happen. That does happen. And hopefully that that changes when they're in therapy, but sometimes it's mandated.

Loretta (42:38.368)

Mm-hmm.

Loretta (42:43.274)

Right.

Loretta (42:47.071)

Ha ha!

Matt Darrah (42:55.751)

People see those as opposites. It's like I'm broken, but I'm ready to heal. But they're not. They're really two sides of the same coin. It's just really a mentality. Like saying I'm broken feels pretty hopeless. saying I'm ready to heal acknowledges your brokenness while wanting to move forward and be resilient. Yeah. So it helps. It really helps to normalize setbacks. Everybody's...

Loretta (43:18.262)

right.

Matt Darrah (43:23.813)

has setbacks. In fact, those two, the next two points go hand in hand. Healing's not linear. It's not. God, I wish it was. Right? In fact, if any psychologist out there comes out with a way to make healing linear, it'll probably be the first Nobel Prize we ever get in psychology. First and only. Or if they find a way to fix everybody, you know? That would be Nobel Prize worthy. It's not linear. It's not a flat walk across the panhandle of Texas, which is pretty flat.

Eventually you're gonna hit Palo Duro Canyon and you're gonna drop a couple thousand feet. you know And then you're gonna have to climb back up that wall at some point And so it really is an up-and-down and when you have kids like in foster care who have a history of trauma think about Think about an obstacle course Kids who come from healthy families don't have much in the obstacle course and it's easy to get through

Loretta (44:02.935)

Thank

Matt Darrah (44:22.567)

You've got kids coming into foster care who have this horrible background and traumatic history. And then think about like American Ninja Warrior. That's their obstacle course. Yeah. Yeah. Like the kids from the good family, they're just going through the swing set in the backyard. Yeah. You know, mom and dad are watching. Other kids are going through hell and back just to try and make it through. really realizing that healing isn't linear. When your kid does something

Loretta (44:33.911)

Mm.

Matt Darrah (44:52.709)

and regulates themselves one day and then maybe the next day it seems like they're two steps back, that's still progress. They're still making progress. So it's not about a finish line because as humans I think we're always meant to be growing and working on ourselves. Yeah, it's the same thing in business. They say if you're not growing, you're And so, you know, but it is. mean, you have...

Loretta (45:14.44)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Matt Darrah (45:21.597)

great, wonderful, amazing days, and then you have crap days. And so continuing to move forward when you're having the crap day is the thing. you can't, if you don't have the emotional intelligence to be able to see where you're at, you're not gonna be able to see any progress. know? You're gonna be stuck on a, I don't know what.

Loretta (45:26.37)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (45:51.219)

tilt a world and go on 24-7 because you don't realize where you're stuck and that's just it. That's what you think life is. So, our listeners, you guys out there, you need to have compassion for yourself when you're trying to work through traumas and for the kids that are in your care and the people, your spouse, your whatever, because

It's a process. so you need to have compassion on yourselves when you lose it. there is no parent, no good parent that has a batting average of 100 or whatever that number is. A thousand. I don't know. not baseball-per-gamer. I'll watch it, but I know anything.

Loretta (46:42.334)

Right.

Matt Darrah (46:50.289)

you're never going to be parent perfect. As a matter of fact, there's the book that we give out to foster families in our placement packages. I think she talks about being present, like if you're present 30 % of the time, like you're ahead of the game. You're not going to be perfect every day. You're going to make mistakes. Your kid's going to do something that's going to trigger you or your...

Loretta (46:54.555)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (47:20.335)

one kid's going to do something else to trigger the other one or whatever, and having that compassion for yourself and for the kids that are with you that, we're moving, you know, sometimes one step forward, two steps back, but then we keep going, right? You've got to have that compassion. So, let's talk about sitting with anticipatory grief, right? Because they're...

Loretta (47:22.549)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (47:50.355)

Loretta, you didn't, weren't here on the last episode, we talked a lot about the fact that whether it's a family member that has a protracted illness that ends up dying or you're living in this scenario where you don't know if Suzy's gonna be here tomorrow or not and you don't know the scenario that they're gonna get back into, whether or not it's gonna be good or not and so there's that anticipatory grief where you're

Loretta (48:12.85)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (48:19.911)

You're grieving something that either may or may not happen, but you're anticipating that it could happen. So how does that... You're talking about grieving the life or future that we wished we'd had instead of the trauma that we had. Yeah. Yeah, so in any really trauma, anybody who's experienced trauma, which again...

I would argue is probably everybody at some point in time in their life. It alters some part of our life. So even after my car wreck, you know, a few years ago, it altered. And while I'm 100%, I'll probably have to have a shoulder surgery again down the line and have some word recall issues occasionally due to a concussion. so it's... That happened. I can't change the wreck. I wish I could have. I would have saved me a lot of time and money.

Loretta (48:54.516)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (49:19.347)

I mean, no surgery. But grieving the life or future that maybe we had hoped for. So ultimately, I'd hoped to never have had to, you know, get a new car anytime soon. Yeah. The car I had was fully paid off. They didn't make that car anymore. So it's not like I could replace it with the same one. I had to go car shopping while fully concussed with an arm that they didn't know what was wrong. Something was wrong, though.

Loretta (49:33.992)

So.

Matt Darrah (49:48.563)

And my insurance came back and was like, you've got a week left with the rental in the middle of the COVID market where new cars were cheaper than old. Right. So that was like, you know, looking back, I would have even hoped for the car wreck to have happened before COVID. Yeah. Because it would have been easier to get a car. At one point, he told me, it's either this car or you wait two months to see if we get a different one in.

Loretta (50:00.258)

Mm-hmm.

Loretta (50:10.376)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (50:17.843)

Not like that we're going to, but we might. And then remember those videos of people driving. It was one stadium in Tennessee, I think, where these this guy was like had a video going of all these thousands and thousands of F-150s that they couldn't do anything with because of the chip shortage. They were just sitting there. so golly, yeah, that was a that would have been a bad time to buy a car.

It was. Yeah, I bought a brand new vehicle for ten thousand dollars cheaper than the same one that was a year old. That's insane. Right. Like that. Anyway, I digress. Yeah. The world of covid. So grieving the life of the future that we had hoped for, it's really common, especially in kiddos who experienced trauma when they become adults and even older adolescents to see their friends or to see other people who maybe had opportunities in life that they never did.

Loretta (50:52.358)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (51:16.401)

And that could be a result of the fact that maybe they didn't have the family that they needed to provide that stability and consistency. I look at friends who came from families who were really validating of emotions and acknowledged it, would sit with them. And I think about, what kind of adult would I be if I had had that? Or would I have gotten to this point sooner had I had that? So maybe my life would be the same, but it would have happened sooner.

and normalizing that it's okay to grieve the life that we wish we had hoped for, wish we would have had, or we see in other people. You there are a lot of times where I grieve not having the parents that I need now as an adult. You know, they're there, but at this point in my adult life, if I need my parents, it's probably gonna be to vent about something. I don't need them to pay my bills.

or take care of whatever. I pay my nephew to mow my yard occasionally, you know, when I don't want to, but I'm still paying for that. If I need them, it's because I need them to just sit with me and be present. And I know that that's not there. So there's still a level of grief that comes with, and my sister and I talk about this a lot, of like grieving who we wish our parents would be or were or would have been when we were younger in the childhood we could have had.

Loretta (52:12.765)

Thank you.

Loretta (52:34.963)

And I can relate to that a lot because as a child I was a severely abused child in foster care and it took me years to understand as an adult that it was okay to grieve that and

to understand that. That I didn't have mom or dad available, never knew my dad, and I grieved that forever.

Matt Darrah (53:16.051)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I still have dreams where I meet up with my biological dad, because I have no idea who the hell he is, where he is, if he's alive or not. My brother paid for one of those genetic, you know, ancestry, whatever, one of those 23 and me. every once in a while I'll get an email and be like, hey, do relatives, it's like, oh, is my dad on there? You know, I mean, it's just there. so so.

Loretta (53:41.328)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (53:45.659)

being, it's okay to feel that and acknowledge that and realize that, you know, we're working on something and we're, but we're hopefully moving in the general direction of healing. And I do want to point out, like, that we're not trying to say foster parents should be perfect. No. Because no parent's perfect. None. I don't have kids.

Loretta (54:03.73)

All right.

Loretta (54:10.074)

Right.

Matt Darrah (54:13.629)

But I have a nephew and I sure didn't get like a how to be an aunt book or even like I remember the first time I met him, you know, he was in his car seat. We got home and the first thing he did was throw up all over me. It was like my initiation into the aunt club yeah. We talked all the time. Yeah. So you're not really an aunt until you get thrown up on, guess. So it's not about being perfect, but.

Loretta (54:17.426)

Yeah.

Loretta (54:30.418)

Absolutely.

Loretta (54:35.195)

Right.

Matt Darrah (54:41.971)

I see this more in my friends who've become parents than I do in older generations. Not to say it's not present in those generations, but I can tell you in my family, my parents never admitted when they were wrong and never apologized. And that is so huge. There was one time I remember I was overstimulated. I had a migraine, so I wasn't feeling good. And my nephew was just kind of pushing some buttons.

Loretta (54:55.473)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (55:11.071)

And I raised my voice a bit like I wasn't physical or anything like that, but just kind of raised my voice at him. And I know he's sensitive to loud noises. And so I always try to be mindful of that when he's around. Mind you, I'm a musician, so I've got loud things in my house naturally. And I could see him start to shut down and kind of go back into his shell because the loud noises, like it really impacted him of me just raising my voice and took took a breather.

Loretta (55:37.051)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (55:39.827)

think both of us needed it. And I came back and I apologized to him. was like, buddy, I'm sorry. And I even told him, I'm not feeling good. This has been a bit much for me. It just got me to my tipping point. It's not OK that I yelled at you in this situation. If he's about to cross the street and a car's coming, I'm going to yell. That's different. But in this situation, just apologizing to him. And that relationship I've built with him,

Loretta (56:00.815)

Right.

Matt Darrah (56:08.093)

has a level of safety that other people in our family with him may not necessarily get. But yeah, I think being able to admit when you're wrong or you mess up as a parent and apologize for that can be hugely healing. So do you have some research or some success stories to show change being measurable?

Loretta (56:10.309)

Hmm.

Loretta (56:22.414)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (56:37.949)

Do have anything like that that we can go through or no? I mean, there's a lot out there at Income with story after story. You know, when we go back to Hope, we know that that platform, providing them that platform can help them to. And we use the word reversibility of trauma. Again, we're not saying that trauma is going to go away and you're going to forget what happened, but that you're going to be able to move on with it and dictate how things happen.

Loretta (56:52.944)

.

Matt Darrah (57:08.177)

I have a lot of just anecdotal stories that I could share where I've seen over and over again sexual assault survivors who, and I'm the advocate, so I'll get called out. And I generally just see them once. And there are some that I've followed up with, a forensic nurse or a different advocate. I've followed up in some way to see kind of what's happened. And it's normally a case that sticks with me. Generally, I can compartmentalize, but not always.

Loretta (57:18.704)

Thank

Matt Darrah (57:38.131)

And some of these cases really surprised me. Or even when I show up, knowing what's happened to this kid and how grateful they are just to be playing with some toys and to be getting some attention and to get that contact with someone who is a safe individual. And so again, it's really just anecdotal. Honestly, if anybody goes to Google smaller and types this in, they'd be able to find something.

Loretta (58:03.203)

Thank

Matt Darrah (58:06.795)

So, but it's very real. Those measurable changes. In fact, I would argue that lot of foster parents probably see it. Yeah, for sure. mean, Loretta is a, Loretta's story is a great one. It's a real world scenario where I know Loretta and Darren and they're not perfect, but they are loving parents. And they have, they have

Loretta (58:15.747)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (58:35.341)

really brought about healing in their, or helped facilitate healing from the trauma that's in their lives.

Well, okay, so let's talk about these metaphors, the kintsugi, is that how you say that? That's how I'd say it. But you know how we are in the South, the way it's spelled. Yeah, so talk about that, what is that? Yeah, so that's an Eastern art of repairing a broken bowl, vase, whatever. So you put it back together, the broken bits you essentially fill with gold.

And it actually makes a piece that's more beautiful than before. In fact, again, you can Google it, K-I-N-T-S-U-G-I. But it's this concept of if you offer hope, love, support to an individual who's been broken, a lot of times the person that they become, not all the time, everybody's different, right? It depends.

Loretta (59:18.819)

you

Loretta (59:43.839)

you

Matt Darrah (59:46.319)

Sometimes you can see a level of beauty that comes from that. That wouldn't otherwise happen. I'm not saying you should go around breaking people. I'm simply saying brokenness and getting broken is part of being a human. you can either stay a broken bowl or you can get filled with some golden repair and maybe be better and stronger than you were before.

Loretta (59:53.73)

Haha

Loretta (01:00:01.419)

Yeah.

Loretta (01:00:13.718)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (01:00:14.291)

I mean, my own life is kind of a picture of the fact that, you know, stuff can happen and then that leads us to be, you know, in a scenario where we're, you know, we've done 67 placement packages this year and we started this podcast and so many great things have come out of this organization out of brokenness. Right?

Loretta (01:00:42.781)

Yeah. Well.

Matt Darrah (01:00:44.367)

And Loretta's the same. I she's got six kiddos that she's adopted that aren't perfect, but... I'd like to meet a perfect kid. That'd be weird. That'd be wild.

Loretta (01:00:59.786)

And I look at my own experience from my traumatic childhood as the exact same situation. I can relate to the foster kids because of what I went through. And I felt like that helped so much in our years as foster parents.

Matt Darrah (01:01:27.667)

Yeah, you know, and I don't know what the numbers are, but I do know that a lot, a lot of the foster families that I talk to and interact with on a consistent basis were in the foster system. Yeah. And that's what gave them the heart and the passion to do it. Yeah. I'd love to know what the percentage is. I just don't know that anybody's ever, I'm sure somebody's done.

Loretta (01:01:41.602)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (01:01:55.227)

study on that or something. But I mean, it's a real thing. mean, it's a huge percentage of the families that I know. One of them was in one of them, both of them, whatever, was in the foster system. One of my board members was in the foster system. And when she found us through some just digging on it, she was had to do a community service project at AC.

Loretta (01:01:57.228)

Yeah.

Loretta (01:02:15.925)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (01:02:25.219)

and she wanted to find an organization that did something for foster kids and she found us. She started serving with us and she has for like three years. so beauty can come from brokenness. Talk about this, the growth rings in a tree. Yeah, so that's a concept of, I think most people are somewhat aware.

Loretta (01:02:26.029)

Signs and all.

Loretta (01:02:39.289)

Yes, absolutely.

Matt Darrah (01:02:53.703)

that if you cut a tree in the tree trunk, essentially, and you count the rings, it gives you the age of the tree. Those rings in a tree can also indicate if at one point it was damaged, because there might be some deviation in the ring or some blemish of some kind. And then you can still see the other growth rings start to normalize back out.

Loretta (01:03:09.505)

.

Loretta (01:03:22.689)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (01:03:22.803)

So it both shows kind of the growth over time. So in a more linear way, again, healing is not linear, but you can observe it because time is in our world linear. Not to get into astrophysics or anything crazy like that. because time is linear, you can see that growth over time. It's hindsight's always 20-20. So it's those growths, growth rings in a tree, just like with humans.

I mean, don't go cut a human in half because that's not gonna work. No, probably like spill out Dr. Pepper and french fries or something. But it can, just like in a human's life, you can see those layers and maybe where there were problems and where they are now. And so that's really what that concept is. And that's one thing that...

Loretta (01:04:00.794)

Hahaha!

Loretta (01:04:14.144)

Yeah.

Loretta (01:04:19.296)

.

Matt Darrah (01:04:19.443)

You know, I encourage people to do all the time and I'm not sure I don't remember to do it myself. But look back. Two, three, four, five years ago and see, you know, I think back to when the kids first came to us versus where we're at today and, you know, the counselor, the kids counselor from from early, early on testified in court and she said, she said the changes I've seen in these kids.

And the last year is nothing short of miraculous. And because there was, there was huge changes and improvements. And so, you know, think back to yourself or think back to the kiddos that are in your care and, you know, look back and see the improvements and that brings you right back to hope. You know, that there is hope. So.

Loretta (01:04:51.124)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (01:05:18.355)

In closing guys, the brain can heal through that whole neuroplasticity thing that we talked about a long time ago. that trauma changes the brain, but then we can reverse those changes or overcome those, learn to live with those changes. Kind of rewire the brain. Yeah, rewire it through that neuroplasticity. You're not...

Loretta (01:05:26.468)

Mm hmm.

Matt Darrah (01:05:46.661)

It's not nature and nurture. We talked about that. It's not exclusively one or the other. It's both. You're not your diagnosis. If you have a diagnosis or your child has a diagnosis, that's not who they are. That's something that they're working through. Right? Trauma is not one big experience. Trauma can be big T traumas or little T traumas that go on over an extended period of time.

Loretta (01:05:52.671)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (01:06:16.467)

We as foster and adoptive families and kids and things can have vicarious trauma where they where we are impacted by the the trauma that happened to others all leading up to the fact that there is hope. Reversibility of trauma is a thing. We can learn to grow and be better parents and our kids can grow and learn to be better humans.

and things like that. And here's the thing, safe, consistent adults are powerful in the lives of children. Now, research shows if there's one to two, two's best, safe, consistent adults in a child's life, that they have better outcomes. Whether they've been trauma exposed or not. I mean, even kids who maybe come from a

Loretta (01:06:47.027)

Thanks, guys.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Matt Darrah (01:07:12.115)

fairly solid home, and my mom and dad just work a lot. Maybe they have a teacher that's their person. I grew up with really some phenomenal teachers. One of them's still on my Facebook. She's from fourth grade. And it's all about, that goes back to their level of belonging as well. If they feel like they have those adults, those consistent people, they're also gonna feel like they belong.

Loretta (01:07:30.551)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (01:07:36.805)

somewhere and with someone, which reduces isolation and it really helps overall with their mental and subjective well-being. Yeah. So, and it doesn't have to be a foster and adoptive parent. It can be that CASA worker. can be that caseworker. know, I talked to a lady that was a caseworker for a long time and then she became, she moved into working for CASA to recruit CASAs.

And she talked about this boy, young man, I guess he was 15, had been in care since he was five. And he was 15. And at that age, can have a cell phone, depending on where they're at and everything. But the caseworker has to sign off on who was on that contact list. And so she was talking to him, where's your list? There was one person on that list. And it was his CASA

And then CASA had been with him for 10 years as he had moved all over the state. Kid didn't even know where he was born. He was born in Houston and he was going to a place here and didn't even know. But that one person just stuck with him for 10 years. so that, you don't have to be the foster parent, the adoptive parent that brings them in. You could be the...

Loretta (01:08:57.052)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (01:09:05.255)

the youth pastor, the child worker, whatever, safe, consistent adults are powerful in the lives of traumatized children. And then there is hope. Hope is that game changer. Love it. So, foster adopted parents, you can be the platform of hope. If you're listening and you're not a foster and adoptive parent,

Loretta (01:09:16.51)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Darrah (01:09:33.203)

Maybe you can be the person of hope in one of those traumatized kids' lives. Progress. It's slow. Oh, it can be so slow. So slow. But it's possible. Reversibility of trauma. I've been kind of chomping at the bit to get to this episode because we've been talking about heavy, heavy stuff. We kept saying, we're going to get there. We're going to get there. There's a good message at the end of this. so...

Loretta (01:09:46.75)

Okay.

Matt Darrah (01:10:00.765)

Progress is slow, but it is possible. so, you know, think about your story. Think about your kiddo's stories. And then we talked about this in every episode, but it's okay to get help. Like we've got to overcome this stigmatism in the culture that it, you know, know.

I'm a man. I don't need help or whatever. know, I'm a strong, well, they say I'm a strong something woman or whatever. Strong, independent woman. Independent woman. Yeah, yeah. Don't need help. I don't need no man. So, guys, it is. It's super important. So if you haven't caught the other four episodes in this series, I strongly, strongly recommend you go back and you listen through this whole series because it's good stuff. It's heavy stuff sometimes, but it's all good and it's all important.

Loretta (01:10:26.252)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (01:10:53.875)

Hannah, I'm so stinking thankful that you were willing to take all this time and sit down and brainstorm through these episodes with me and write the outlines and come record them. And then I forgot to mention earlier, listening through once I've edited it to make sure we didn't do it's Yeah, you told me that after. I'm like, I'm not putting something out without...

Loretta (01:11:13.925)

I'm sorry.

Loretta (01:11:21.821)

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Darrah (01:11:22.099)

with somebody without their approval and come back and say, I'm here to do this or that or whatever. And Loretta, I'm super thankful that you took time to come visit with us and share a little bit about y'all's story and hopefully just demonstrate that there is hope. There is hope. And so I really appreciate it. guys,

Loretta (01:11:48.258)

And that's.

Matt Darrah (01:11:49.147)

We provide placement packages for kids coming into foster care. That's kind of our main gig. Our podcast is out here. We're trying to grow it, trying to build connections between foster and adoptive families and resources and share good stories and tough stories and stuff, but just be honest and build connections. But we do these placement packages. And a placement package,

Loretta (01:11:54.748)

.

Matt Darrah (01:12:15.283)

There's six things that come in a placement package. It's a suitcase, a Bible, a teddy bear, a book, a toy, and a blanket, and then whatever else they need. So that could be clothes and formula and diapers and wipes and car seats and all the things. so it takes money to do that. And so we'd ask you to become a placement package partner. A hundred dollars a month buys all the clothes for one placement package.

$50 a month buys us a case of diapers and then $10 a month buys one outfit for a kid per month. so, please think about getting set up to be that placement package partner for us. It really, really helps us be able to grow. Last year we did 80 placement packages, the entire year. This year in the middle of June, we're at 67. And so,

Loretta (01:12:51.51)

Yeah.

Matt Darrah (01:13:12.955)

The end goal being every kiddo gets a placement package. That's where we want to be. About 600 kids across the Panhandle come into care in the 26 counties of the Panhandle And so we want every child to get a placement package. We can't do that without your help. So please consider that as you look at your finances. And thank you again to Bracken Hoekstein from Excel Construction Group. He's a great guy. He's volunteers with us.

Just a just a super great guy. So if you don't know him get to know him his number is 806-341-6205 or BR Hoechstein that's BRHOCHSTEIN at xlcg.com or check him out at xlcg.com and Guys, thank you so much for listening. Make sure to LIKE SHARE and subscribe

We want more and more people to find out about the things that we're talking about on this podcast. so please like, share, and subscribe. Hannah, thanks again so stinking much. Yeah, absolutely. And Loretta, thank you so much for taking some time out of your schedule to do this as well. And we'll catch you next week, guys. Thanks.

Loretta (01:14:13.019)

Absolutely.